I don’t think taxing Making News decks “rely” on traces. I think they rely on Astroscript (and maybe to some extent SanSan). With NE Hub you are going to have more card draw, and more influence to work with so you can fill out your econ package to make up for the loss of those two credits when it comes time to use an Ash.
Anyone trying to claim any deck featuring Astroscript & Biotic Labor is pretty silly. Kroen’s thread is hopefully an amazing troll.
Ash is certainly good in non-NBN IDs that don’t have trace credits.
I LOL’d.
I refer back to a quote Lukas made to a group of us at Worlds:
“I’m surprised no one is running Biotic in NBN.”
(I know, they didn’t have NAPD, Sweeps, etc.)
3 Likes
I’m sorry, couldn’t help myself.
For those who don’t know, Kroen is a guy who post 50 deck ideas a day and started a topic about the fact he was not credited for making deck X 
2 Likes
And not a single one of them are any good 
4 Likes
They are always interesting though, to be fair to Kroen.
Spags, this deck is broken as hell. I don’t know what I would change, I haven’t used reclamation order in around 10 games with it, so that’s what I’d be looking to cut, probably for rotos and elis.
Some a-hole posted a long thread about astrobiotics with a weird name and long-winded, pointless card-by-card explanations on bgg like it’s a new thing, which prompted this response from @Daine:
roborob wrote:
Daine wrote:
I just threw up a little in my mouth.
This is the soulless, fun-killing exploitation of FFG’s worst design >>>failures. It’s a pox on netrunner, and the source of negative play experience.
I realize that no amount of complaining will get FFG to give us answers to the horror that is astroscript chaining, but I, for one, will not get behind FA NBN. I cheer against it anytime I see it, even when it means supporting someone I don’t know over a close friend. I hate it. I wish ill upon FFG for continually pumping it.
This was a good write-up of the dirty, shameful secret that we all already knew about. NBN FA is disgustingly powerful. It’s easy to play. It’s speeding up the game and crowding out other strategies. May it rot.
Why don’t you tell us how you really feel.
You joke, but I think that was actually fairly measured. I didn’t comment on those who play with this strategy (OP included), I avoided apocalyptic language about decks like this one utterly destroying netrunner, and I avoided using any offensive language.
Seriously, I think NBN is the worst thing going on in netrunner land. There’s no thumbs down button, so I had to make my own. I’m not threatening to quit the game, not picketing at FFG headquarters, and I’m not throwing bile at NBN players, but I am trying to voice my opinion in the name of community standards. You’ll get no praise from me for winning with this deck.
I think it’s okay to be disgusted by this. I’m blown away that NBN inexplicably gets in faction cards that are spray-painted with a light dusting of yellow theme, which replace ALL of the cards that top tier NBN decks spent influence points on.
The main offenders being sweeps week and wrap around, which are strictly better than ice wall and beanstalk royalties (for what they were being used for in those decks) because they fill the same functions while being hosers for other high-level decks.
In my opinion, it’s our duty as tournament players to pilot the broken decks until FFG fixes them, this deck is clearly one of those decks.
5 Likes
Can you please not post BGG-bile over here on Stimhack? I came over here to get AWAY from all that shit.
6 Likes
Not to derail the thread further, but I never link to BGG when posting to stimhack, I only post this comment from Daine because it is topical, relevant and Daine is one of the best netrunner players I know.
As knee-jerk as it may sound, it’s a reasonable opinion born from a lot more competitive netrunner experience than I have.
3 Likes
I used to think this way. I don’t think that’s going to change things. There should have been a restricted list after Gencon last year, IMHO. I don’t see it now, unless we come out of Lunar the way we started it. However, look at what’s winning; there’s still quite a diversity, which should only to continue to spread as new IDs come out. Remember the ‘brokeness’ of Blue Sun, everyone?
This deck is sick. The OP’s deck is sick, too, as NBN is sick. APP makes this possible. I still compare it to the smaller Core Identities:
H-B: ABT. Solid, but came bite the crotch, hard.
Weyland: HT. Really tough, but has a tremendous detriment.
Jinteki: Nisei. One of the best Agenda abilities in the game, but at the cost of a 4/2 in a leaky faction.
NBN: APP. …
Yeah, the Reclamation was a lark, in case you needed extra econ (it is Operation-based). However, more taxing ICE like Elis/Lotus/Roto would be an even better bet.
I really like where the game is/headed, but, NBN is borderline NPE. However, something has to be on top and hated, ala the Miami Heat.
I also second the notion of BGG-bile avoidance. This is the cabin in the woods where we come to relax from the busting metroplexhole that is BGG.
3 Likes
Objections noted, and sustained. I will not speak of the other website lest we awaken he-who-must-not-be-named from his slumber and summon him into our reality to post shitty decklists.
7 Likes
Thanks for making my soda drip out of my nose! It was painful, but worth it!
My personal opinion is that pretty much all of the (perceived or real) NPE bullshit going on corp-side in the meta currently can be traced back to how weak Anarchs are.
(broken record? no, wait, hear him out)
One of the strengths of Anarch is forcing interactivity - they simply have ways of making you care about what they’re doing.
Against a Shaper or a Crim, single-mindedly rushing forward in your own game plan and hoping you’ll be fast enough might very well be a viable approach. With Anarch, not so much. A super-typical trait of their cards is “will become a back-breaking problem for you if left unhandled” (Parasite, Datasucker with an open central, DLR, Medium, Nerve Agent, Keyhole, you name it). This extends into prohibitively punishing openings that aren’t punishable normally - name two cards that can trash a Biotic in hand, see how many of them are red.
Now, if you take a look at the current list of “blegh” decks, it’s not hard to see how these traits are desirable in those matchups. But, alas, Anarch has so many consistency issues that in general play, they can’t really properly leverage these strengths and are left floundering because of all their other issues. So what we’re left with is shapers importing one Imp to get a super-weak taste of the Anarch pie and praying to God it’ll be enough.
(finish that goddamn article, you lazy-pants)
4 Likes
But that’s the great thing about green. One imp and one parasite can actually be 6/7 of whichever is more important (exaggerated for emphasis, but not too much). And you get all the stuff to parasite ICE before you encounter it.
I still think The Source should be more prevalent. The only corp that somewhat shrugs is Weyland. Whatever that Yellow Jackets deck claims, NBN don’t often set out to build a proper scoring remote, and piling up FA tricks is super expensive. 2 influence is a bitch to find though. Still not wholly convinced that most of the grey runner cards with influence couldn’t have been red.
I want a way for the runner to interact with counters on agenda cards. I’d love to be able to derail the astrotrain without blind luck coming into play in such a big way.
(sorry that post is a bit meandering, but it sort of contributes, hopefully)
1 Like
He’s more of a tempo hit to you than he is to the corp, in 90% of the cases. Turning every random-access agenda into an NAPD contract is rarely a good thing 
(and that’s in a scenario where you teched heavily to keep him around, spending card slots and influence. If you didn’t, it becomes even more problematic).
There’s one problem with this - hosted agenda counters range all the way from “automatically obtained” (Astro, Nisei) through “not too much of a problem” (Atlas, Vitruvius) all the way to “needs serious setup and resources” (Braintrust, Beale).
This means that properly costing an effect like “remove a hosted agenda counter” is a huge bitch to pull off, maybe even impossible. Either you screw the guys that worked super hard to get them, or you’re not hitting the “auto” crowd hard enough.
Just imagine Exploratory Romp said “Make a run on HQ. If successful, remove an agenda counter hosted on an agenda in the corp’s scoring area”. How many credits should it cost to play? Would you actually play it?
1 Like
Ashigaru and Lotus Field rather suggest that trend is moving on to Jinteki now as well. Which is shame, because I thought H&P did a very good job of powering up Jinteki whilst keeping their theme, strengths, weaknesses and unique playstyle in play.
Well, lotus field at least does feel somewhat Jinteki mechanically as well as flavor-wise. Jineteki is good at code gates, and they have weird ice, and lotus field is both of these. Wraparound, on the other hand, feels more Weyland to me, at least mechanically, than it does NBN. Sweeps week I don’t mind- everyone deserves some econ.